We explore the geometry of the Cayley graphs of the lamplighter groups and a wide range of wreath products. We show that these groups have dead end elements of arbitrary depth with respect to their natural generating sets. An element $w$ in a group $G$ with finite generating set $X$ is a dead end element if no geodesic ray from the identity to $w$ in the Cayley graph $Γ(G,X)$ can be extended past $w$. Additionally, we describe some nonconvex behavior of paths between elements in these Cayley graphs and seesaw words, which are potential obstructions to these graphs satisfying the $k$-fellow traveller property.
The study of the poset of hyperbolic structures on a group $G$ was initiated in a paper by C.Abbott, S.Balasubramanya and D.Osin. However, this poset is still very far from being understood and several questions remain unanswered. In this paper, we give a complete description of the poset of hyperbolic structures on the lamplighter groups and obtain some partial results about more general wreath products. As a consequence of this result, we answer two open questions regarding quasi-parabolic structures: we give an example of a group with an uncountable chain of quasi-parabolic structures and p…
In this article, we completely characterize the asymptotic behavior of conjugacy separability for the lamplighter groups. More generally, we give exponential upper and lower bounds for all wreath products of finitely generated abelian groups where the acting group is infinite and base group is finite.
Given a finite group $H$ and a free group $F_n$, we prove that the wreath product $H\wr F_n$ admits a metrically proper, isometric action on a Hilbert space.
We consider the two generalizations of lamplighter groups: automata groups generated by Cayley machine and cross-wired lamplighter groups. For a finite step two nilpotent group with central squares, we study its associated Cayley machine and give a presentation of the corresponding automata group. We show the automata group is a cross-wired lamplighter group and does not embed in the wreath product of a finite group with a torsion free group. For a subfamily of such finite step two nilpotent groups, we prove that their associated automata groups are linear.
The degree of commutativity of a group $G$ measures the probability of choosing two elements in $G$ which commute. There are many results studying this for finite groups. In [AMV17], this was generalised to infinite groups. In this note, we compute the degree of commutativity for wreath products of the form $\mathbb{Z}\wr \mathbb{Z}$ and $F\wr \mathbb{Z}$ where $F$ is any finite group.
From any two median spaces $X,Y$, we construct a new median space $X \circledast Y$, referred to as the diadem product of $X$ and $Y$, and we show that this construction is compatible with wreath products in the following sense: given two finitely generated groups $G,H$ and two (equivariant) coarse embeddings into median spaces $X,Y$, there exist a(n equivariant) coarse embedding $G\wr H \to X \circledast Y$. As an application, we prove that $$α_1(G \wr H) \geq \min(α_1(G),α_1(H))/2 \text{ for all finitely generated groups $G,H$,}$$ where $α_1(\cdot)$ denotes the $\ell^1$-compression. As an ot…
We give a geometric proof based on recent work of Eskin, Fisher and Whyte that the lamplighter group $L_n$ has infinitely many twisted conjugacy classes for any automorphism $\vp$ only when $n$ is divisible by 2 or 3, originally proved by Gonçalves and Wong. We determine when the wreath product $G \wr \Z$ has this same property for several classes of finite groups $G$, including symmetric groups and some nilpotent groups.
We examine the geometry of the Cayley graph of the lamplighter group with respect to the generating set rising from its interpretation as an automata group due to Grigorchuk and Zuk. We find some metric behavior with respect to this generating set analogous to the metric behavior in the standard wreath product generating set. The similar metric behavior includes expressions for geodesic paths and families of `dead-end' elements, which are endpoints of terminating geodesic rays. We also exhibit some different metric behavior between these two generating sets related to the existence of `seesaw'…
We study the effects of subgroup distortion in the wreath products A wr Z, where A is finitely generated abelian. We show that every finitely generated subgroup of A wr Z has distortion function equivalent to some polynomial. Moreover, for A infinite, and for any polynomial l^k, there is a 2-generated subgroup of A wr Z having distortion function equivalent to the given polynomial. Also a formula for the length of elements in arbitrary wreath product H wr G easily shows that the group Z_2 wr Z^2 has distorted subgroups, while the lamplighter group Z_2 wr Z has no distorted (finitely generated)…
We study the minimal possible growth of harmonic functions on lamplighters. We find that $(\mathbb{Z}/2)\wr \mathbb{Z}$ has no sublinear harmonic functions, $(\mathbb{Z}/2)\wr \mathbb{Z}^2$ has no sublogarithmic harmonic functions, and neither has the repeated wreath product $(\dotsb(\mathbb{Z}/2\wr\mathbb{Z}^2)\wr\mathbb{Z}^2)\wr\dotsb\wr\mathbb{Z}^2$. These results have implications on attempts to quantify the Derriennic-Kaimanovich-Vershik theorem.
We calculate the spectra and spectral measures associated to random walks on restricted wreath products of finite groups with the infinite cyclic group, by calculating the Kesten-von Neumann-Serre spectral measures for the random walks on Schreier graphs of certain groups generated by automata. This generalises the work of Grigorchuk and Zuk on the lamplighter group. In the process we characterise when the usual spectral measure for a group generated by automata coincides with the Kesten-von Neumann-Serre spectral measure.
We study generalisations of conjugacy separability in restricted wreath products of groups. We provide an effective upper bound for $\mathcal{C}$-conjugacy separability of a wreath product $A \wr B$ in terms of the $\mathcal{C}$-conjugacy separability of $A$ and $B$, the growth of $\mathcal{C}$-cyclic subgroup separability of $B$, and the $\mathcal{C}$-residual girth of $B.$ As an application, we provide a characterisation of when $A \wr B$ is $p$-conjugacy separable. We use this characterisation to the provide for each prime $p$ an example of wreath products with infinite base group that are …
Let T be the homogeneous tree with degree and G a finitely generated group whose Cayley graph is T. The associated lamplighter group is the wreath product of the cyclic group of order r with G. For a large class of random walks on this group, we prove almost sure convergence to a natural geometric boundary. If the probability law governing the random walk has finite first moment, then the probability space formed by this geometric boundary together with the limit distribution of the random walk is proved to be maximal, that is, the Poisson boundary. We also prove that the Dirichlet problem at …
We determine all positive harmonic functions for a large class of "semi-isotropic" random walks on the lamplighter group, i.e., the wreath product of the cyclic group of order q with the infinite cyclic group. This is possible via the geometric realization of a Cayley graph of that group as the Diestel-Leader graph DL(q,q). More generally, DL(q,r) is the horocyclic product of two homogeneous trees with respective degrees $q+1$ and $r+1$, and our result applies to all DL-graphs. This is based on a careful study of the minimal harmonic functions for semi-isotropic walks on trees.
We use elementary methods to compute the L2-dimension of the eigenspaces of the Markov operator on the lamplighter group and of generalizations of this operator on other groups. In particular, we give a transparent explanation of the spectral measure of the Markov operator on the lamplighter group found by Grigorchuk-Zuk. The latter result was used by Grigorchuk-Linnell-Schick-Zuk to produce a counterexample to a strong version of the Atiyah conjecture about the range of L2-Betti numbers. We use our results to construct manifolds with certain L2-Betti numbers (given as convergent infinite sums…
We determine the precise asymptotic behaviour (in space) of the Green kernel of simple random walk with drift on the Diestel-Leader graph $DL(q,r)$, where $q,r \ge 2$. The latter is the horocyclic product of two homogeneous trees with respective degrees $q+1$ and $r+1$. When $q=r$, it is the Cayley graph of the wreath product (lamplighter group) ${\mathbb Z}_q \wr {\mathbb Z}$ with respect to a natural set of generators. We describe the full Martin compactification of these random walks on $DL$-graphs and, in particular, lamplighter groups. This completes and provides a better approach to prev…
The lamplighter group over $\mathbb Z$ is the wreath product $\mathbb Z_q \wr \mathbb Z$. With respect to a natural generating set, its Cayley graph is the Diestel-Leader graph $DL(q,q)$. We study harmonic functions for the "simple" Laplacian on this graph, and more generally, for a class of random walks on $DL(q,r)$, where $q,r \ge 2$. The DL-graphs are horocyclic products of two trees, and we give a full description of all positive harmonic functions in terms of the boundaries of these two trees. In particular, we determine the minimal Martin boundary, that is, the set of minimal positive ha…
We prove that the restricted wreath product ${\mathbb{Z}_n \mathbin{\mathrm{wr}} \mathbb{Z}^k}$ has the $R_\infty$-property, i. e. every its automorphism $φ$ has infinite Reidemeister number $R(φ)$, in exactly two cases: (1) for any $k$ and even $n$; (2) for odd $k$ and $n$ divisible by 3. In the remaining cases there are automorphisms with finite Reidemeister number, for which we prove the finite-dimensional twisted Burnside--Frobenius theorem (TBFT): $R(φ)$ is equal to the number of equivalence classes of finite-dimensional irreducible unitary representations fixed by the action ${[ρ]\mapsto…
We calculate the exact values of the Følner function $\mathrm{Føl}$ of the lamplighter group $\mathbb{Z}\wr\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ for the standard generating set. More generally, for any finite group $D$ and $n\geq|D|$, we obtain the exact value of $\mathrm{Føl}(n)$ on the wreath product $\mathbb{Z}\wr D$, for a generating set induced by a generator on $\mathbb{Z}$ and the entire group being taken as generators for $D$. We also describe the Følner sets that give rise to it. Følner functions encode the isoperimetric properties of amenable groups and have previously been studied up to asymptoti…
Let $G_{p,d}$ be the restricted wreath product $C_{p} wr C^{d}$ where $C_{p}$ is a cyclic group of order a prime $p$ and $C^{d}$ a free abelian group of finite rank $d$. We study the existence of faithful state-closed (fsc) representations of $G_{p,d}$ on the $1$-rooted $m$-ary tree for some finite $m$. The group $G_{2,1}$, known as the lamplighter group, admits an fsc representation on the binary tree. We prove that for $d \geq 2$ there are no fsc representations of $G_{p,d}$ on the $p$ -adic tree. We characterize all fsc representations of $G=G_{p,1}$ on the $p$-adic tree where the first lev…
We prove that the topological full group $[[X]]$ of a two-sided full shift $X = Σ^{\mathbb{Z}}$ contains every right-angled Artin group (also called a graph group). More generally, we show that the family of subgroups with "linear look-ahead" is closed under graph products. We show that the lamplighter group $\mathbb{Z}_2 \wr \mathbb{Z}$ embeds in $[[X]]$, and conjecture that it does not embed in $[[X]]$ with linear look-ahead. Generalizing the lamplighter group, we show that whenever $G$ acts with "unique moves" (or at least "move-$A$ithfully"), we have $A \wr G \leq [[X]]$ for finite abelian…
We prove the law of large numbers for the drift of random walks on the two-dimensional lamplighter group, under the assumption that the random walk has finite $(2+ε)$-moment. This result is in contrast with classical examples of abelian groups, where the displacement after $n$ steps, normalised by its mean, does not concentrate, and the limiting distribution of the normalised $n$-step displacement admits a density whose support is $[0,\infty)$. We study further examples of groups, some with random walks satisfying LLN for drift and other examples where such concentration phenomenon does not ho…
This article is dedicated to the asymptotic geometry of wreath products $F\wr H := \left( \bigoplus_H F \right) \rtimes H$ where $F$ is a finite group and $H$ a one-ended finitely presented group. Our main result is a complete classification of these groups up to quasi-isometry. More precisely, given two finite groups $F_1,F_2$ and two finitely presented one-ended groups $H_1,H_2$, we show that $F_1 \wr H_1$ and $F_2 \wr H_2$ are quasi-isometric if and only if either (i) $H_1,H_2$ are non-amenable quasi-isometric groups and $|F_1|,|F_2|$ have the same prime divisors, or (ii) $H_1,H_2$ are amen…
$\mathcal{C}$-Hereditarily conjugacy separable groups and wreath products
School of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Newcastle（纽卡斯尔大学计算机与信息科学学院）；Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice（南波希米亚大学理学院计算机科学系）；IMPAN（波兰科学院数学研究所）
We prove that for any automorphism $ϕ$ of the restricted wreath product $\mathbb{Z}_2 \mathrm{wr} \mathbb{Z}^k$ and $\mathbb{Z}_3 \mathrm{wr} \mathbb{Z}^{2d}$ the Reidemeister number $R(ϕ)$ is infinite, i.e. these groups have the property $R_\infty$. For $\mathbb{Z}_3 \mathrm{wr} \mathbb{Z}^{2d+1}$ and $\mathbb{Z}_p \mathrm{wr} \mathbb{Z}^k$, where $p>3$ is prime, we give examples of automorphisms with finite Reidemeister numbers. So these groups do not have the property $R_\infty$. For these groups and $\mathbb{Z}_m \mathrm{wr} \mathbb{Z}$, where $m$ is relatively prime to $6$, we prove the t…
The Diestel-Leader graph DL(q,r) is the horocyclic product of the homogeneous trees with respective degrees q+1 and r+1. When q=r, it is the Cayley graph of the lamplighter group (wreath product of the cyclic group of order q with the infinite cyclic group) with respect to a natural generating set. For the "Simple random walk" (SRW) operator on the latter group, Grigorchuk & Zuk and Dicks & Schick have determined the spectrum and the (on-diagonal) spectral measure (Plancherel measure). Here, we show that thanks to the geometric realization, these results can be obtained for all DL-graphs by di…
We prove that all invariant random subgroups of the lamplighter group $L$ are co-sofic. It follows that $L$ is permutation stable, providing an example of an infinitely presented such a group. Our proof applies more generally to all permutational wreath products of finitely generated abelian groups. We rely on the pointwise ergodic theorem for amenable groups.
In this paper we study medium scale curvature, a notion of Ricci curvature for groups. We show that dead-end elements yield non-negative curvature. We make use of related elements to find large classes of positive curvature in the lamplighter and Houghton's group. We also study the effect of increasing the radius of curvature and give examples of positive curvature for arbitrary radius. Finally we make some comparisons between this notion of curvature and the Ricci curvature introduced by Ollivier.
We introduce the notion of connection thickness of spheres in a Cayley graph, related to dead-ends and their retreat depth. It was well-known that connection thickness is bounded for finitely presented one-ended groups. We compute that for natural generating sets of lamplighter groups on a line or on a tree, connection thickness is linear or logarithmic respectively. We show that it depends strongly on the generating set. We give an example where the metric induced at the (finite) thickness of connection gives diameter of order $n^2$ to the sphere of radius $n$. We also discuss the rarity of d…
In this paper we investigate metric properties of the groups $Γ_d(q)$ whose Cayley graphs are the Diestel-Leader graphs $DL_d(q)$ with respect to a given generating set $S_{d,q}$. These groups provide a geometric generalization of the family of lamplighter groups, whose Cayley graphs with respect to a certain generating set are the Diestel-Leader graphs $DL_2(q)$. Bartholdi, Neuhauser and Woess in \cite{BNW} show that for $d \geq 3$, $Γ_d(q)$ is of type $F_{d-1}$ but not $F_d$. We show below that these groups have dead end elements of arbitrary depth with respect to the generating set $S_{d,q}…
Let T_1,..., T_d be homogeneous trees with degrees q_1+1,..., q_d+1>=3, respectively. For each tree, let h:T_j->Z be the Busemann function with respect to a fixed boundary point (end). Its level sets are the horocycles. The horocyclic product of T_1,...,T_d is the graph DL(q_1,...,q_d) consisting of all d-tuples x_1...x_d in T_1x...xT_d with h(x_1)+...+h(x_d)=0, equipped with a natural neighbourhood relation. In the present paper, we explore the geometric, algebraic, analytic and probabilistic properties of these graphs and their isometry groups. If d=2 and q_1=q_2=q then we obtain a Cayley gr…
